


Picking Up The Pieces

by StrikerDouchecanoe



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, alternate storyline after 2x06 i guess, so much angst what even am i, sorry but abby is a total jackass here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 10:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3287558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikerDouchecanoe/pseuds/StrikerDouchecanoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for another Tumblr prompt. This turned into a huge angst fest before I could stop it, but it's kind of cathartic and it ends on a funny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picking Up The Pieces

Bellamy and Murphy stood outside the door of their makeshift prison, both armed nearly to the teeth and trying to ignore Finn’s shouting from inside. Upon their return to camp, Chancellor Griffin had demanded that all of them—including Raven—be arrested. 

Clarke’s face had turned to steel then. She’d taken Murphy’s gun and handed it to her mother without a word, then knelt and interlaced her fingers behind her head. 

"Every one of us is of age," she’d said, her voice like a knife blade. "So,  _Chancellor,_ you can float the six of us right now, or you can let us walk and admit you don’t have what it takes.”

Bellamy had stared, the shock in his eyes mirrored by Octavia when he’d glanced her way. Octavia, to his horror, had set her jaw and knelt beside Clarke. Murphy had followed suit, then Raven. Finn had given Bellamy a hollow look before the two of them joined the others in a line in front of Chancellor Griffin. 

"Clarke, please be reasonable," Abby’d said.

"Chancellor, you chose to float my father," Clarke retaliated. "What’s stopping you?"

Bellamy remembered the broken look in Abby’s eyes as she’d flung Murphy’s rifle to the ground and stormed back toward the medical tent, barking over her shoulder that they were to be let go. 

He and Murphy had taken guns and put Finn in lockup in one of the unused rooms, telling the Chancellor that the prisoner was under their protection. Raven and Octavia had backed them up, but Clarke had shaken her head sadly and walked away, shrugging off Raven’s hand on her shoulder.

Now, they’d been standing guard for three hours and Murphy was trying to convince him to take some time off guard duty.

"Bellamy," Murphy said, leaving little room for negotiation in his tone. "You need to take some time to sleep. Or stare at the wall and brood, I don’t give a damn which."

Bellamy shook his head. “Not gonna happen, Murphy,” he said grimly. “I’m fine.”

Murphy grabbed his arm and yanked him around so that they were face to face. “No one’s seen Clarke in three hours, Bellamy,” he snapped. “I don’t care if  _you’re_ fine. She’s not, and I promise you she doesn’t want to talk to  _me_ about it,” Murphy finished, nearly shouting the last words in Bellamy’s face. 

Without a word, Bellamy handed his rifle to Murphy and stalked off down the corridor towards where Clarke had gone. 

It was surprisingly easy to find her, curled up in one of the corners of her room, drawing on the ground with a piece of charcoal.

Bellamy leaned against the doorframe, suddenly feeling like he was intruding on something that wasn’t meant for him.

"Hey, Princess." It came out softer than he’d meant for it to, more vulnerable. She looked up from the sketch on the floor, tears silently streaking her cheeks and heartbreak in the eyes that had so recently been made of cold iron.

Almost without thinking about it, Bellamy crossed the room and reached for her. Clarke stood and wrapped her arms around his neck, her tears redoubling against his shoulder. 

"I’m so sorry, Clarke," Bellamy whispered over and over again, crushing her to his chest and burying his face in her hair, letting the lump in his throat dissolve into burning tears. "I’m so, so sorry."

"Finn—" she choked out. "Finn—if it wasn’t for me—and I couldn’t back you up, Bellamy, I couldn’t—"

"This isn’t on you," he managed, the tears coming faster now as he relived letting Finn go. "Clarke, I’m so sorry, I should have stopped him, this is all on me, I’m sorry—" Bellamy broke off, shaking with the effort of silencing the sobs wracking his chest, trying to contain the sheer fucking  _guilt_ before it exploded out of him.

Clarke pulled away and carefully framed his face with her hands. 

"Bellamy, listen to me," she said, her voice quivering. "You think Murphy doesn’t feel terrible too? Or Raven?"

"I let him go," Bellamy whispered brokenly, closing his eyes as Clarke swiped her thumbs over his cheekbones.

"You didn’t know. You couldn’t have known. Look at me, Bel," she said. A long beat later, he managed to meet her eyes, swallowing hard against the invisible weight on his throat. "Bel, no one but Finn decided to pull that trigger," she whispered. 

"That means you, too, he argued, wrapping his hands around her wrists.

Clarke only nodded, still ghosting the pads of her thumbs over his skin.

"Sorry about your shirt," she finally managed with a weak smile.

"Sorry about your hair," Bellamy retaliated, reaching out to lift a golden strand away from where it was stuck to her cheek. Clarke rolled her eyes, her smile becoming genuine for the briefest hint of a moment. The guilt pressing on Bellamy’s sternum lightened.

"I need you too, you know," he said, barely above a whisper. "We all do."

Clarke wrapped her arms around him again, and Bellamy could have sworn he felt her smiling against his neck, and maybe the thought made him shiver in a way he hadn’t before, and he pressed a kiss to Clarke’s hair on impulse.

"Bellamy?" she said against the skin his shirt had yielded, sending that peculiar shiver down his spine again.

"Yeah, Princess?" he murmured into her hair.

"Will you stay here tonight?"

He nodded, hands rubbing her back without conscious direction. “I’m always here, Princess.”

 

When Octavia came to relieve Murphy of guard duty, there was a distinct smirk on her face. She wouldn’t say why, but when Murphy went to find Bellamy, he might have just found Bellamy and Clarke tangled up in the same bed, sound asleep.

He also might have woken them up with a snort of laughter that came out much louder than he’d intended. And maybe he owed Octavia a  _shitload_ of his rations, but that was beside the point.


End file.
